Ted Grant

Stalin Liquidates Two Republics

The Daily Worker of June 28th reports, without
comment, the following item under the heading:—“Demoted Soviet Republics did
not oppose traitors.”

“The bulk of the
population of the Checheno-Ingush and Crimean Republics, which have been
deprived of their status, did not oppose the traitors who collaborated with the
German invaders against the Red Army.

“This point was made by
Deputy Bakhumurov in the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. when he explained the
Bill to abolish the Checheno-Ingush Republic and to make the Crimean Republic
into the Crimean Region.

“In view of this, the
Chechens and Crimean Tartars had been transported to other districts of the
Soviet Union, where they had been allotted land and given the necessary State
economic assistance.

“The Chechens and Tartars
are national minorities with a total population of 1,500,000. The two republics
were part of the Russian Soviet Federal Republic.”

Thus the deportation of 1,500,000 men, women and children is treated
as of no more consequence than the transport of so many sacks of potatoes. The
actual dissolution of two autonomous Republics established by the Russian
Revolution is justified by the argument that the inhabitants did not struggle
against quislings who sold out to the Nazis.

These unfortunate people are to suffer the fate which befell the
Volga Germans in the Volga German Republic when the Nazis invaded the Soviet
Union. The whole population of this Republic was deported to Siberia as
“precaution” against the possibility of quislings.

The uprooting and exile of entire peoples is a measure of such
unmitigated barbarism, that it can be compared only with the excesses of the
Nazis in modern times. It is a measure of national oppression that is nothing
but a mockery of the elementary conceptions of socialism.

The real meaning behind these measures of repression is to terrorise
the peoples of the national Republics into submission to the Great Russian
bureaucracy. This is an example of what happens to any people who may oppose
the monstrous Stalinist regime. The pretext that there were quislings among
these people does not hold water. All, innocent or guilty, workers or peasants,
members of the Communist Party—all are to suffer a like fate. This in the name
of Socialism!

How could it happen, if we accept the Stalinist version, that nearly
three decades after the Russian Revolution, whole peoples liberated by the
revolution, should prefer the slavery of the Nazis to the rule of Stalin?

Labour need in Siberia

The only possible reasons for such a measure, naturally not stated
by the Stalinists, are lack of confidence in the regime of Stalin, on the part
of these peoples and the need to make an example and terrorise any opposition
from other minorities. And the need for labour in new areas in the East being
industrialised by the Stalinists. In spite of regulations to the contrary,
there has been a steady drift back to the Ukraine and other areas in the West
of Russia, from the Urals and Siberia, of people evacuated during the war.
Unable to get voluntary labour, Stalin merely transports populations to regions
where he needs them most.

Significant indeed, that only a few months back in the Stalinist
elections in the Soviet Union, these areas, like all others, returned almost a
hundred percent vote in favour of Stalin, “The Father of the Peoples.” These
elections are proved by this alone, to have been a totalitarian fake.

Minorities supported Revolution

In 1917, because of the policy of Lenin and Trotsky, the subject
peoples of the Czarist Empire rallied to the cause of the Bolsheviks, though
the Soviet Union was weak. Without the support of these peoples, the young
Soviet Republic could not have survived. They supported the struggling Soviet
regime because the internationalist policy of Lenin and Trotsky stood for
equality and freedom for the subject peoples of all Russia.

With the rise of Stalin, the national liberties of minorities in the
U.S.S.R. have been restricted and curtailed. While the masses have lost all
semblance of control, the power and privilege of the Great Russian bureaucrats
has entrenched itself. The tyranny of the G.P.U. prevails over the peoples.

That any large section of the peoples, apart from isolated
individuals, would betray the Soviet Union to Nazi invaders would have been
unthinkable under Lenin and Trotsky.

In 1918, at one of the most crucial periods in the history of the
Soviet Union, the Left Social-Revolutionaries assassinated the German
Ambassador in order to provoke an attack by German imperialism which had just
imposed the monstrous peace of Brest-Litovsk on the young Soviet Republic.
Taking advantage of this, the German government demanded that German soldiers
be stationed at the German Embassy in Petrograd to guard against future acts.
Lenin replied: “You want Germans? We’ll give you Germans!” So confident were
the Bolsheviks of the loyalty of all the peoples of Russia to the ideals of the
socialist revolution that Lenin was prepared to entrust the German soldiers of
the Volga Republic of this highly important task.

The Bolsheviks gave the right of self-determination to the point of
secession to all the peoples and minorities of the Soviet Union. The Union of
all the Republics of the U.S.S.R. was to be a voluntary one with full rights to
secede from the Union if the minorities considered their rights were curtailed
or were nationally oppressed by the dominant nation, the Russians. Even in the
Stalin Constitution (which remains a scrap of paper) this right is solemnly
guaranteed.

But so far as the Stalinist bureaucracy is concerned, the peoples in
the Soviet Union are so many cattle.

White Guards offered full citizenship

If the population remained unconvinced of the fundamental advantages
of the system in comparison with capitalism, then surely there must be
something wrong with the regime? These events are symptomatic of the profound degeneration
which has affected the Soviet Union under the Stalinist regime. They are
especially significant in the light of the fact that the Stalinist Government
is now offering full citizenship to all the former White Guards who fled abroad
after the revolution and have been conspiring against the Soviet Union ever
since. The excuse for this is that the advantages of the system have been so
demonstrated, that these White Guard elements can be freely absorbed. How [does
one] explain the fact that the peoples see no advantages in the Stalinist
regime, but the White Guard capitalist elements do?

These two events have occurred in the same week. They are a
significant indication of the processes taking place in Stalinist Russia.